Genetics question

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I agree with the conclusion Frankie. But if I was to go ahead with this, any animal used would be out of a performance tested herd and wouldnt just be any old animal of that breed I could find.
 
Conclusion: I think if yall stopped breeding mongrels and stuck with the real reason people are in this business:
Beef

and Jeanne is correct-- the continental/british cross is the most bang for your buck ---from a beef standpoint quality pounds and not quantity pounds-- there is a difference.
For instance, breeding to Brahman is like taking 20 cents away from every dollar you make and flushing it down the toilet.
Ed
 
A controlled cross isnt a mongrel by any means. A composite animal that can be bred back on itself and consistantly produce the same results isnt a mongrel. And im sure if we all went back we would find that every single purebred breed was once a mongrel that was bred back to itself to produce a "purebred". Most purebred breeds out there now have something in them when they decided to open the herd books up anyway!
 
Bizin: Have you considered a black galloway instead of the bison......... I think they would do everything you're expecting of the bison but would be a beef breed. Or are galloways considered exotic? (I see looking over your posts again, you mention that)

there surely are some people out there breeding sim/angus to beefmasters (that's the one that readily comes to my mind and I realize there are many other crosses as well) for a 5 way cross. I would think they are getting hybrid vigor and heterosis.

I don't know that an 8 way cross is beneficial because the breeds would be so diluted. We have some heifers we'll be breeding this winter. They are 1/4 holstein, 1/4 angus , 1/2 red poll and also 1/4 holstein, 1/4 angus , 1/2 galloway. The hubby has said we're breeding them to a hereford. I don't think we're "mongrelizing" them, but then that's just my opinion.
 
MoGal... galloways are a british breed and yes we have considered it. The guy we buy our welsh black bulls off of also has galloways and both him and I dont think they stand up to the Welsh Blacks. They are good cattle with lots of hair, but not what we are looking for.
 
BIZIN":12humao2 said:
'76... I wont be screwin up the hereford herd. They will be here till the day I die, hopefully till my family line runs out. Hereford is in my blood for 4 generations, and I dont plan on doing anything to those hereford cows but improving them. Hereford cows are great for what we need, but I'm sick of paying these feed costs and pasture costs. I want to run bison but dont want the facilities or the hassle of such wild animals running around. I just feel that a touch of bison would do good.

alftn... beefmasters are a rainbow of colors I agree, but I would like to develop a solid black breed that is consistent and uniform. The british white could be taken out of there and replaced. I would love to have an animal that is Horned hereford, welsh black, Irish black, and a touch of bison. That consistently throws black calves that have no bison characteristics when you view them. I also want a breed that has no exotic in it. Black gelbvieh is an option too if I wanted to go that way.

Armydoc... we have been breeding alot of our commercial hereford cows to black angus and welsh black bulls, for years we bred those bbf and bwf cows to black simmental and black gelbvieh bulls and had one be nice of a cross. But a few years ago I kept a bull that was half black gelbvieh/half black angus and bred him to a group of half welsh black/half horned hereford cows and got a set of calves that out performed any of the halfblood calves.

This is one of the things I read that intrigued me. See Table 1.
http://www.uaex.edu/Other_Areas/publications/PDF/FSA-3057.pdf

I am not a geneticist like many of the posters on here, but I was once in the same dang boat. Ask about anyone on here and they can tell you about all my bull posts and flip flops. In the end, I wasted precious time I ought to have spent really, seriously thinking about what would be profitable and realistic for my operation. Notice, I didn't say what I wanted to do, but what was profitable. When I decided to do that, all sorts of doors opened up, and now I have an opportunity to make a little money by working with local operations and working with breeds I love. If you've got a cross that's working for you, why in the world do you want to try and fix something that ain't broke? Take that Gelbvieh bull and put him back on those half-blood cows and roll with it. My 2 cents.
 
I agree with not going over 4 breeds in a cross. There MAY be benefit from jumping from 4 to 8 breeds but it would be so economically infintisimal that you would need 2000 cows to prove it even existed.

Beware of the bison. I have always read that using bison cattle hybrids decreased fertility. I would do a lot of research on this before I spent any money on it. Any decrease in fertility will hurt you more than any amount of heterosis can help you.

I have exchanged a couple of emails in the past with Lee Leachman. I used to get regular marketing emails from them (Colorado is just waaaaayy too far for me to haul cattle and my business plans appear to be screwed up). If you have a legit question, he will probably respond to direct email.
 
A neighbouring property to my own ranch, was owned by a family company which had their own breeding herd, feedlot, abattoir and butchery. They ran a three way rotational cross for many years, but had issues with one of the breeds, and in the lack of uniformity in the different crosses. They came to see some bulls I was selling, but in discussing the problems, we agreed I would produce an F1 damline instead, and they would produce the terminal for their feedlot. The result was a uniform preforming cross, with a better feed conversion and daily gain than the average of the rotational cross.
 
You also need to think of the man hours it would take to keep knowledgable about 8 different breeds. I "TRY" to follow Polled Herefords and Angus. That means reading the breed mags, sale catalogs, and visiting sales and such to eyeball the popular bloodlines so I sort of know what phenotype to expect to see when I see a pedigree or go out to look at a sire prospect. Outside of those two breeds and to a much lesser extent the Line One horned Herefords and Pinzgauers, I admit that I really am not competent to even comment on the popular sires of the other 50 breeds. To really become (and stay) comfortable and functionally competent using genetics from Horned Herefords, Welsh Blacks, British Whites, two different types of bison, and then FOUR other breeds to be named later would be like having another parttime job.
 
Aside from the tick resistance the welsh black does everything else. They're hardy, easy fleshing, docile, good mothers, good milk, docile, fatten on grass, where they originate from means they have foraging ability (snow yeah?) and can convert poorer feed, they do well in extreme cold and they're here in Australia so they must be ok in the heat, good marbling... I don't get why you would want to throw the british white and bison in when you've pretty much got it covered as is within the hereford x welsh black. If anything maybe throwing some Euro in there would be better for you. Like you say it's your money and your cattle so do what you want.
 
aussie_cowgirl... thats where I am right now. We have a cross that works, but I begin to wonder if it can be improved upon. Our problem is finding good Welsh Black bulls, that fit our program. I am also debating on buying some Irish Black bulls and crossing them onto the hereford cows. But I have to get down to Colorado to see the Irish Blacks first. Its all hypothetical right now because I am young and working on building a cowherd. Dont really have the money to blow just yet on a crossbreeding program. But thank you everyone for your ideas and advice.
 
To get a 5 breed cross bred in exactlly 1/4-1/4-1/4-1/8-1/8 you would need
A purebred crossed with a 1/2-1/2 to get a 1/2-1/4-1/4
say a hereford bull crossed on an gelbv limmie cross cow to get 1/2H 1/4G1/4L
1/2-1/2 angus-simmental bull crossed on the 1/2H 1/4G 1/4L cow you would get
1/4 angus 1/4 simmental 1/4 hereford 1/8 Gelbvieh 1/8 Limousin

A person could put any breed in they wanted
Having written it out it doesn't seem as hard to do as I first thought
I don't know if you could get any extra hybrid vigor out of this much cross.
The quailty of the individual animal would have more to do with getting a quaility calf than 5 different breeds
 
BIZIN said:
aussie_cowgirl... thats where I am right now. We have a cross that works, but I begin to wonder if it can be improved upon. Our problem is finding good Welsh Black bulls, that fit our program. I am also debating on buying some Irish Black bulls and crossing them onto the hereford cows. But I have to get down to Colorado to see the Irish Blacks first. Its all hypothetical right now because I am young and working on building a cowherd. Dont really have the money to blow just yet on a crossbreeding program. But thank you everyone for your ideas and advice.[/quote]

You cant afford NOT to crossbreed. Straightbreeding is for those who haave everything paid for. Keep your crossbreeding sytem simple though. Using 3, 4 or more breeds in a crossbreeding sytem can take a lot of breeding pastures in order to maintain your percentages and the record keeping of which cow has what percentages can take more work than running a registered herd. Are you prepard to sort cows about 10 ways at breeding time? Unless you have a reliable source of the proper percentage mix of bulls breeding those percentages in will be a lot of work and time.

A simple 2 breed rotation will provide all the heterosis you need over the long haul. You could mix a third breed terminal bull in there to breed to the lesser cows that you don't want to keep replacements from.

Brian
 
Smnherf....right now we run mostly bbf cows and hereford cows. we breed the best hereford cows back to our hereford bulls and the rest of the hereford cows to welsh black bulls. the BBF cows we breed to black simmental and black gelbvieh bulls and keep the best heifer calves and breed them to sell as bred heifers. because cows are worth nothing right now as culls or as breds, we have kept all the bad bags, bad feet, and poor mothers in a seperate herd and we breed them to charolais bulls. therefore we have no urge to keep any of their offspring. I'm hoping cow prices go up so we can get rid of those cows and get rid of one pasture. For the time being I want to expand our hereford herd and concentrate on their genetics and the quality of that herd. As well as build up our bbf herd with more welshblack X hereford cows. The guy who buy our 1/4 hereford, 1/4 welsh black, 1/4 black simmental or 1/4 black gelbvieh heifers are really pleased with them and have said that when they breed them angus or charolais they have one hell of a set of calves.

Reading about the Stabilizers and the other 4 way crosses out there, as well as hearing what our customers have said about our heifers being bred to a 4th breed, has really sparked my interest at developing a composite of my own.
 

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